Header Right

Design Your Own iPhone Case and Sell It

Gang,

Fact number one. Nobody can deny it any more. The economy is tough these days and, I guess, many of us are looking for a way to earn some extra money to make up for lost jobs or income.

Fact number two. iPhones are selling like crazy. 1.7 million iPhone 4s were sold in its first three days of availability and that was on June 15th! And iPhone accessories are selling like crazy too. Including the iPhone cases. And that’s where you come in.

In this tutorial I will show you how to design your own iPhone case (in this case it is a case for iPhone 4 [Am I funny or what?], but there are templates for other iPhones too) and sell it on CafePress. Or, you could make it a present and give it to your friends and family or just make one for yourself (that’s if you have iPhone, of course) 🙂

Now, the precondition to create your own iPhone case design is to have your own shop on CafePress. I know it sounds complicated, but please don’t leave already, it’s actually quite simple. Just bear with me.

So, if you don’t have your shop on CafePress, please register (it’s free) and open your shop.

Next step is to download iPhone case template (I used that one for iPhone 4 case in this tutorial)

2. Open iPhone 4 case template in Photoshop (or Photoshop Elements). Notice the green outlines? They are here to guide you during the creation of your own design. Leave the background as it is.

6. I used “replace brushes”, just to keep the brushes window “clean” but you can use “load brushes” option too.

7. Add new layer (below the one which is on 50% opacity) and place the damask brush in the center. You can re-size it, but don’t overdo it.

8. Add another layer and place another Damask brush above the first one. Usually I add elements on individual layers because if I want to be able to move them around independently.

9. Finally I add some text (on a separate layer, of course, separate layer should be created automatically on newer versions of Photoshop)

10. Now that we are done, we can delete the 50% opacity layer.

11. Save the JPG file for your custom iPhone case design

12. Save it in maximum quality.

Of course, this part was to show you how I did it. Feel free to play around with different brushes, colors, text to get your own unique design. You can use my Photoshop brushes for your commercial projects including, but not limited to, creating your own designs for all products on CafePress, Zazzle and similar services.

13. Now, time to go back to the “Product designer” in CafePress. Click on “Select an image”.

14. Upload your new iPhone case design image.

15. Add some info about your iPhone case design so that customers can find you on CafePress shop. (Of course, you can embed the link to your product on your Facebook wall for your friends to see.)

New Photoshop brushes in my little Graphics-Illustrations shop of wonders, I just made this Ginko Leaves Photoshop brushes set and I must say I'm quite happy how they turned out. These leaves have a nice shape to start with and they will make a beautiful add-on to your projects. Read more…